Full Text of Supervisor Steve Kinsey’s Letter Blasting Dick Spotswood

Supervisor Steve Kinsey is not the most subtle fellow. When he gets angry, he reacts. Restraint is not his hallmark. The “send” button is his weapon. Last Sunday’s IJ column about the lack of action by Marin County supervisors to restore the third lane on the Richmond Bridge is a good example. His anger is all the more amazing since his name wasn’t even mentioned in my column. For your edification, here’s the full text.

Dick, I understand that you are magnificently underwhelmed with the Board of Supervisors and myopically focused on finding fault with all we do or don’t do. Still, when I read your column on efforts to re-introduce a third lane on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, I was impressed with how little you know about the issue, how little you sought to find out, and how wrong you are.

What kind of radical centrist would start and end their journalistic investigation using only the public comments they have heard to determine that nothing is being done. Perhaps it works best when you simply spout your opinion, because fact-finding takes time and doesn’t always jive with the story you want to get out. By making demons out of the “all-powerful” Steve Heminger and myself, have you lost your will to even check with us before hitting the send button on another slimy attack? Lucky for you, your comments are relegated to a page that allows free speech, whether factual or fabricated. In today’s piece on the 3rd lane, you have contributed nothing other than your lopsided feelings. How Marin!

If you are ever ready to look into the situation, there are many who could provide you with information. That’s because MTC, Caltrans, and TAM executive staff and Commissioners have been meeting together to review the proposal, discuss the funding options, and consider a number of technical issues that go far beyond your simplistic determination that it isn’t “tremendously expensive”. You could check with Chevron to see why they are opposed to elements of the plan on the Contra Costa side. You could inquire with Bay Trail planners to see what implications the third lane will have on long sought bike/ped improvements in the vicinity of the east side touchdown. You could study the engineer’s drawings that illustrate a range of options to address the goal of maintaining safety while reducing delay.

Keep up your “mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take it” style of journalism. You are perfecting it, and it suits the level of research and information that you bring to your work. Steve Kinsey

Personal sniping is so unhelpful and unbecoming. I don’t care who’s to blame, but I look for intelligent discussion to help me know what measures to support to help alleviate the 101N backup problem which has been intolerable for a long time, and seems to worsen daily.

Supervisor Kinsey himself is not one to let pesky facts get in the way of his decision making. He’s safely entrenched and therefore unaccountable except to his contributors. It’s “Kinsey knows best,” When the County gets sued he blames litigious environmentalists, or bad science, or incompetent consultants. To ask questions is to challenge Steve’s fragile ego. So back off, Dick. When the Marin Monarch feels it’s time for the press to look into what he’s up to, he’ll be in touch.

Kinsey is apparently operating beyond his competence level. If he were doing his job properly, he would have kept the public updated on all the hard work he is doing to solve some well known and crippling traffic problems in Marin and the bridge, rather than sniping at a very effective local Journalist. I work in the East Bay many times in a month, and only careful planning and unusual hours keep me smoothly moving back and forth, and once in a while I get caught spending a half hour getting from 101 to the bridge. Of course there are many factors, but not until the 580 link from 101 to the bridge, and the bridge itself are made three lanes each way will the problem be solved!

Get to work, Kinsey! Stop sniping at the public voice that notices what you aren’t doing, and do your job!

The IJ needs to know when they report on issues without conducting reasonable research. Issues in West Marin unfolded and it took the IJ considerable time finding an objective balance with their reporting. Mr Spootwood will brush up on his research and respond. It’s a shame we all do not have that same influence.

“Wrong, myopic, slimy…mad”. He forgot to call you a racist, he must be holding back.

Perhaps you should ask him , next time he goes to San Francisco will he be taking his bike or the bus? Surely he has no issue with people biking 40 miles roundtrip. Since he’s not working to address the traffic congestion this would be his solution, right?

Or does he perchance have some realities and constraints preventing pursuit of the idealistic vision he would inflict on Marin residents?